Wish
by emeraldeyes83
Summary: You're crying. No, you are weeping, you are howling, you are breaking your strong, determined little heart right there and then on the cold dewy grass. Your fist pounds at the earth. You curse. You spit. You rake up handfuls of mud and throw them into the future with spite. You scream. You curse some more. You wish you were dead.


_Make a wish._

 _Baby, do you know what you did today?_

 _Baby, do you know what you took away:_

 _You took the blue out of the sky;_

 _My whole life changed when you said goodbye,_

 _And I keep crying…_

You are a lone figure on a bleak horizon and you are running. Even with the blood rushing in your ears you can still hear his voice calling your name. It's a voice you know better than your own. It's that hum in your ear when you're trying to study; it's that snipe at your side as you walk to class; it's a secret voice, at night, husky, in the dark, when your body is alive and wanting.

No matter how hard you run you know you will not catch up with that voice, but you can't stop. You are not running towards something, but away.

In your eyes you see fire and smoke. Somewhere at the back of a memory is a noise that chills your blood. You do not want to remember.

You were always one to pride yourself on your dignity. Yes, always dignified, rarely hysterical, and never irrational. Your speech was well-thought out, your chin lifted, your arms folded. Yes, dignified to the point of being respected, nothing less than a head-girl should be.

Even at the End-Of-It-All you stood still. While others fumbled around for the right spell, you stood tall, taller than your five-foot-something-inches normally allowed, neck arched regally. Your brown eyes were proud to be fighting for what you believed in and glowed with self-respect even in the darkness of what would soon become a burial site.

You voice was strong and clear and carried far, your charms and curses and spells hit direct and firm. You didn't miss.

And there is more pride still as you march forward, fear vanished, because you look first to your left and then to your right, and the pride isn't for yourself. Half is for The Boy Who Lived and Lived Again. The Man Who Lives Still with his noble green eyes and wand hand scarred for prosperity.

Half is for The Boy Who Changed Your life. The Boy Who You Were Meant to End up With. More than half: he can have your slice of pride too.

He had come so far in your time at Hogwarts, grown from the irritating freckled boy with dirt on his nose into the headstrong man who would protect you at all costs – STOP. You don't want to remember.

You are still running, feet pounding a rhythm with your heart which is louder in your ears than anything else is. Away. Away. Away. You can hear it in every heavy foot that pummels into the muddy ground, and it isn't raining but you wish it would. Your feet keep falling in strikes, blow after bitter blow onto a world that has betrayed you at all costs.

You can taste salt but you keep running, running through a world which is bleary and uncertain now. A world you don't want to fight for anymore.

This thought halts your speed. The scenery rushes past as if still on fast-forward and then stops, does a double-take and rewinds. Your head is giddy. You double over and gasp for breath, filling your bursting lungs and quelling your burning throat. Hands on knees you stare as the grass and choke back oxygen as though your body doesn't feel the same way your head and heart do: it wants to keep living.

Your head lifts and though there is a mixture of tears and hair in your eyes you see all you need to. Before you, into the distance, a burnt orange sun is slowly setting as if life goes on, flaming pink across the hills. You should keep running. There is a whole world out there now, a free world, a safe world to live in.

This thought brings you finally to your knees. You heap your body onto the grass in the most undignified manner imaginable, face pressed into hands pressed into dirt and shriek so manically your blood wants to curdle.

You re crying. No, you are weeping, you are howling, you are breaking your strong, determined little heart right there and then on the cold dewy grass. Your fist pounds at the earth. You curse. You spit. You rake up handfuls of mud and throw them into the future with spite. You scream. You curse some more.

You wish you were dead.

 _Ooh baby: Wish I never saw the sunshine,_

 _I wish I never saw the sunshine,_

 _And if never saw the sunshine, baby, then maybe, I wouldn't mind the rain._

She is twenty-six and at the Burrow for Christmas. She loves the Burrow at this time of year and feels so at home with both her real parents and her parents-in-law around her that her little heart might burst.

Fred and George are older but still act and look as though they are sixteen; Ginny is the most beautiful woman she has ever seen up-close in real-life. Harry is as handsome as ever, perhaps a little pale as he remembers other Christmases, less happy ones, but his eyes have been freed of a great weight he harboured at a young age.

She is flushed and glowing. His cheeks too hold a ruddy complexion, she wonders: was there ever a time she didn't find him completely adorable? And then remembers Hogwarts and smiles. Irritating, but adorable.

At their feet are two small girls, twins, both with blue mischievous eyes, prim, serious smiles and masses of copper curls. A family of four and a boy on the way. He hopes he will be a Keeper for the Gryffindor House-Team, she hopes he will get thirteen OWLS.

She has always wanted a massive family to make up for being an only child. She had always wanted a massive family with _him_ …and as the paper begins to fly upwards in a mist of happiness and he whines that he got _another_ maroon jumper she grins and thinks that sometimes, you do get the happy ending.

They are sixteen and talk about the future. He wants to play for the Cannons, but he'd settle for being an Auror.

His hands are soft at the nape of her neck and his eyes are so very blue that all she can think of is swimming…of drowning.

He smiles. Oh yes, there he is, the man she fell in love with. He is her hope, her strength, her…Oh Merlin she hates to think it…everything.

Graduation will have to be postponed because of the war. She doesn't mind because she is in no doubt as to the outcome of that particular event: the three of them have it all worked out. (And in hindsight it seems stupid that for all their planning and whispering and all of his strategic arrangement none of them noticed that last Death Eater throwing a curse that would change the course of her fate).

They graduate in September, three days after her twentieth birthday. They pose for photographs, the famous trio, in which Harry grins, Hermione beams and Ron tries to make them both do something stupid.

He succeeds in making her whip round to glare at him; Harry topples into a confused Ginny who visibly swears in her brothers direction. Oh yes, she would've like a copy of that photograph.

He looks beautiful in his smart new robes and will soon be off to play for the Cannons. (In her mind she gives him a few years of professional playing before he decides take a more settled job and start a family). That night he gives her the ring she had been promised since the last evening of the war when, caught up in the moment, he had grabbed her hand and told her he wanted her with him always. Forever.

Wait. Some of this happened.

He taught her how to dream vividly, but she has always been a know-it-all but oddly enough the knowledge of the difference between her dreams for the future and her actual reality isn't reassuring.

She is nineteen and broken.

 _Every day is just like the day before:_

 _All alone a million miles from shore._

 _All of my dreams I dreamed with you, now they will die and never come true,_

 _And I keep crying…_

Hermione is sitting alone by the water again, Harry sighs. He wishes she would yell or read, tell him some long-winded and practically useless quote from a Magical History book, start a debate about Elfish Welfare, but she just sits.

She didn't come to her graduation and she refuses to leave the Wizarding world, this place, her thoughts. But she is the only one who can save Harry and Ginny from despair, brave, strong, determined Hermione with healing words of wisdom. The silence is destroying them all.

"Hermione…" She doesn't even flinch but he knows she is crying. Dignified, that's how he's always though of his best friend, even in grief she was dignified.

Harry's own eyes are red and puffy, even now, months later. How do you stop crying for the greatest man you ever knew? He didn't know. Yes the war seemed to be over, for the Muggles who scraped through with a few freak volcanoes and hurricanes, but for the Weasley's with three of their six boys dead, the war would be carried through Wizard generations to come.

Harry isn't doing a very good job of comforting Hermione because he too is searching for comfort. If only they could look at each other then maybe they could start to feel real again, instead of ghosts of their former selves.

They sit together for hours, just watching the sun rise and fall in a time that is only theirs. There are no words in this place which suits, for now words are inadequate to describe their loss. Sometime along the way Harry puts his arm around her shoulders and they cry together. Nothing is resolved.

The incredible trio are now a shattered duo. It is hard to think that merely months ago their whole future was laid out ahead in simple terms. He was there. Now he's gone. The future lies in tatters.

And some days later, quietly, Hermione speaks aloud. "I wish…" She murmurs and if she'd been a different girl she would've waited patiently for a shooting star or a chicken bone. "I wish…"

What did she wish for? Graduation pictures with Ron and Harry and Ginny; Merry Christmases at the Burrow; dozens of red-headed children. But never, even in the darkest moments does she wish never to have met Ron, never to have bickered with him in the common room, never to have been by his side, holding his hand and knowing the meaning of true happiness. These times are precious and unchangeable.

Harry stays silent and wishes too, wishes something that had once crept maliciously into the corner of Hermione's mind. Wishes it had been him instead.

It should have been him. But thinking of Ron makes him smile with fondness and he can't help but quip: trust that bugger to steal all the limelight. And before he knows it he says "Ron's a selfish prat sometimes"

She looks at him now, her brown eyes battered and broken. And his statement is so blunt, so unlike the _sorrys_ she has been filled to sickness with, so _Ron_ , that she can't help but smile. It's the tiniest smile which dusts the corners of her mouth.

And maybe there is some hope, a flicker, somewhere, just beyond a veil.


End file.
